November 8, 2011

Paranormal Activity 3 review

If you don’t know by now, just about everything you see in the trailer is not in the movie, as posted in this article. As scary as they all seem, it’s nice to not see anything and get a basic sense of what to expect in an 86-minute movie. For those who are wondering why they weren’t included in the final cut, they didn’t fit the story. Period. No matter how funny or scary a scene is, if it doesn’t fufill the A-story, it doesn’t belong. If you want to debate this, I won’t necessarily disagree with you, but that’s just how it is.

In ranking the third film, I would put it just below the first one in terms of overall grade and fright factor. The noticeable difference between the second and third one is that there are more scares in the third one, and frankly, it just made it that much better. I can tell it really wants to thrive via a natural buildup, but in a sub-90 minute movie, there’s just not enough time to do that, and I think they learned from the second one.

Many were disappointed with the ending, but what did you expect from an ongoing franchise? Were you really shocked that it was open-ended? They did their job in creating so many questions, as me and my buddy debated all the possibilities the whole walk home. Not to take anything away from the ending, but it was kind of redundant to me having seen The Last Exorcism. A freaky twist notwithstanding, that has me pumping my fists for the next one.

Directed by the makers of Catfish, the prequel set numerous box office records on a $5 million budget and does a pretty good job of setting up the story for the 20 years in between. Hopefully, they can pump the next one out by next Halloween.